First notes of Prague

The people of Prague seem to be a delightfully sullen group. They brood with a hardened history and strong emotion – and you gotta love it!

Maybe it’s a holdover from the whole communist past thing, but Czechs seem to have a penchant for hard-work and hard-knocks – as epitomized (as I recently found out) by a wash-and-dry laundry process that consumes no less than four hours of your precious time!

AND - dog owners don't pick up their dog's poopsies. Instead, city workers walk around with a specialized vacuum. It does not do a very good job of cleaning it up. It sort of gets frozen to the cobblestone.

I live in the Osadni dorm in the Holesovice side of town. On my flight to Prague from London Heathrow, I sat next to a woman from Prague who now lives the life of a celebrated academic in the field of psychology at Oxford. When I told her that I would be staying in Holevice, she responded that it was a not-so-good neighborhood. And with my proper assessment of the ‘hood, I would liken it to Gotham City's Narrows of Batman Begins.

No worries because I am loving these working-class surroundings. Smoke stacks and all. The accommodations are very mod and spacious and I will tell more at another time.

I went out to a jazz club that boasted its visits from BB King. I loved the saxophonist (off picture, to the left) the most because his paunch and touristy shirt from New Orleans told me that this was a fellow who could just as well be a dad from Wisconsin. Music is so universal.

(Thanks to Julia Zangwill for the above picture)

I’ve also been privileged to watch a puppet show. It was total pure genius – involving a children’s tent as a turtle shell, irreverent biblical references to the expulsion of Adam and Eve, and the inescapable hilarity of a squirrel. The players of the puppet show were students from the prestigious Prague Theatre Academy and they later played a Balkan-inspired concert.

The people of Prague are a fun-loving bunch indeed.